I had always thought it was just a stylistic thing, but rewatching Q, I noticed that during the super zoomed-out shot of the Black Moon with all the Failures levitating in front of it and flopping around, screaming can clearly be heard. Not just like the scream that Unit 13 made when it awakened, but normal human screams, a ton of them, nearly identical to the screams heard when Neon Genesis' Third Impact really began, during that shot where it shows the entire earth turning orange as humanity is returned to LCL. If the Failures really are the citizens of Tokyo-3 transformed, it could be that they're dormant inside these gigantic bodies, aware of everything happening around them but unable to do anything about it, just like Asuka during the infamous opening scene of End of Evangelion.

I've reached a point where I just generally don't give a fuck anymore. In a good way.

The distorted scream is a stock sound effect that probably isn't supposed to literally be a scream most if not all of the times it's used. It reliably creates an eerie, otherworldly sort of atmosphere, so the sound designer keeps on bringing it back.

That said, I do believe the script for Eva Q refers to the FoIs as being in suspended animation, so the possibility of them being resuscitated in the next film exists. My bets are on Eva-01 waking them up to combat Gendo's mass-produced units.

Reichu wrote:That said, I do believe the script for Eva Q refers to the FoIs as being in suspended animation, so the possibility of them being resuscitated in the next film exists. My bets are on Eva-01 waking them up to combat Gendo's mass-produced units.

He had mass produced Eva's? How did I miss that? I thought they were replaced witht the new goofy units 5, 13 and so on.

And weren't the failures not just mentioned in the prologue? Because I can't remember how they should have came to existence, since the last shot of 2.0 was the unit 01 doing something with wings and everyone standing around. Unless the rings of those black holes are some sort of distance restrictions of how much you are in trouble, since everyone next to it was just fine for the next 14 years and the rest red and vanished...

"Being human, having your health; that's what's important."(from: Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi )"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?"(from: The Eccentric Family )Avatar: Such an angelic fascinator you're wearing, Shinji! (details); Past avatars.Can't wait for 3.0+1.0? - try Afterwards... my post-Q Evangelion fanfic (discussion)

pwhodges wrote:We see the production line for some parts, at least, at 36'25":

Okay. I thought of the Evas as being more fleshy than robots. But I guess that makes sense when you think about that there weren't any other robots with limbs used.

Reichu wrote:During the actual Third Impact, which happened between films and involved the 12th Angel reaching Lilith.

This is why I belong to the people that dislike the story and overall structure of the rebuilds. The visuals are quite good, but they had the budget and maybe time for that. But jumping to another time with leaving a lot out is kind of cheap imo. Which sets Anno's lore-making even to that of Dark Souls. At least for me.

Jinroh wrote:There are hundreds of them in the teaser at the end of the third movie.

Was it after credits? Because I don't watch those, so maybe I missed it there. But I also thought that the Eva's had a more holy role, in the sense that there could only be a certain number of them just as there has to be like 18 angels according the prophecy/manual-for-world-breaking. And wasn't the new Eva Asuka tested in the second rebuild an angel in disguise or is the infection something completely different (*cough* MacGuffin *cough*) ?

TheChosenJuan wrote:Was it after credits? Because I don't watch those, so maybe I missed it there. But I also thought that the Eva's had a more holy role, in the sense that there could only be a certain number of them just as there has to be like 18 angels according the prophecy/manual-for-world-breaking. And wasn't the new Eva Asuka tested in the second rebuild an angel in disguise or is the infection something completely different (*cough* MacGuffin *cough*) ?

For all we know Evangelion 13 can still be the Unit with the highest number if the MPE are a series like the Mark.04 (maybe Mark.12).

Joseki wrote:For all we know Evangelion 13 can still be the Unit with the highest number if the MPE are a series like the Mark.04 (maybe Mark.12).

The angels are 13 in the movies by the way.

Ah okay, I thought it were 13 MPE and 18 in total to get things going. What I don't quite get is what I saw in the preview recently. And I'm not just talking about the more fanservice, but the fact that an Eva that self-destructed just lost an arm and a leg! How Can You Get A Selfdestruction Wrong???

Maybe they had enough spare parts to make up a half of the frankeneva. Maybe the preview (as previously) has precious little to do with what we'll actually get.

"Being human, having your health; that's what's important."(from: Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi )"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?"(from: The Eccentric Family )Avatar: Such an angelic fascinator you're wearing, Shinji! (details); Past avatars.Can't wait for 3.0+1.0? - try Afterwards... my post-Q Evangelion fanfic (discussion)

pwhodges wrote:Maybe they had enough spare parts to make up a half of the frankeneva. Maybe the preview (as previously) has precious little to do with what we'll actually get.

I dunno. It's hard to believe that he would let out a huge battle that resembles the one Asuka had in EoE, even though the preview scenes mostly looked like little excuses for parts he couldn't get in (or wanted to. the rebuilds had differing lengths so far for some reasons).

So in conclusion it's just another conundrum he let in for the sake of his next plot twist. He's kinda becoming the M. Night Shyamalan of anime making. Well, kinda...

But to get back to the OP: Is anything Eva / Seed / Angel related even considered "alive"? They have either accumulators, power cords or cores and none of those are beating.

TheChosenJuan wrote:Ah okay, I thought it were 13 MPE and 18 in total to get things going. What I don't quite get is what I saw in the preview recently. And I'm not just talking about the more fanservice, but the fact that an Eva that self-destructed just lost an arm and a leg! How Can You Get A Selfdestruction Wrong???

Okay, I haven't taken that good of a look on that image in the movie. But it makes the preview even dumber. Unless they either ditched the idea of having a human "soul" in the Evas or made it possible to clone one as well. Besides it makes the whole idea of self destruction or any commonly known idea seem ridiculous.

TheChosenJuan wrote:Okay, I haven't taken that good of a look on that image in the movie. But it makes the preview even dumber. Unless they either ditched the idea of having a human "soul" in the Evas or made it possible to clone one as well. Besides it makes the whole idea of self destruction or any commonly known idea seem ridiculous.

Why? Eva's can be rebuilt, the part that matters is the core in the chest, the rest can be replaced.

TheChosenJuan wrote:Unless they either ditched the idea of having a human "soul" in the Evas

My guess? They probably did. Eva-01 is some sort of exception on account of being an early experimental type. For the rest, it's the cover story from NGE made reality: the cores (actually "core units" in the films) house nothing more than personality data, digitized using Magi-type tech. This explains why pilots can hop from Eva to Eva like they're trying to catch a VD, and means that their ability to pilot isn't lost if their Eva gets blown up or placed in bondage as an energy source or something. (Anyone wonder why there are visual parallels between Yui and Eva-13? I sure as hell did -- until I figured there just might be a copy of Yui's personality data in the core for Shinji to sync with.)

There has always been core swapping even in NGE, it gets mentioned as Asuka loses sync with 02. Ritsuko mentions they will have to swap 02's core.Rebuild has something similar. In the opening scene of 1.0 when Shinji refuses to pilot and it looks like they will have to use Rei:

Interestingly, we never hear or see this being undone, so it looks like Shinji piloted 01 in Rei's configuration.Afterwards when Shinji is dreaming of the 'train of thought' or whatever you call it, "berserk Rei" appears to him, the same visual from Unit 00's berserks in NGE that appeared to both Rei and Shinji during tests.There are likely multiple souls in 01's core, digitized or otherwise, or else a unique single soul that happens to fit both Shinji and Rei, and the mode can be switched to change the pilot without physically swapping the core out. This may only be the case for 01 and not a generalized feature of all Evas. Why Mari and Asuka can pilot 02 almost certainly has to do with the strange things linking those two together, similar to Rei and Shinji's unique maternal connection. Asuka's suit has no core, but Mari's does. This has strong implications for Shikinami if you really think about it, but let's not get into that.

As for the thread's question, the Failures of Infinity are probably as dead as Lilith herself, and Kaworu remarks that she is truly dead. The Failures of Infinity probably died when Lilith was decapitated. There are little filaments trailing out from the angelically hijacked Lilith that trail into the piled skulls of the decapitated Failures. These filaments have the same appearance as the filaments that trail from Mark.09 into the Wunder when Mark.09 hijacks it.

Mark.09 is a 'vessel of Adams' and has apparent control over Adam-based life, which the Wunder probably is. However, to control & transform humanity into the form of an Evangelion, SEELE or the twelfth angel (whoever is responsible... probably SEELE, given Kaworu's explanation of their plans to Shinji) had to implant an angel into the body of Lilith, thus Mark.06 fused to her. Lilith is the only being that has that kind of power to manipulate humanity.

What seems to have happened is that Mark.06, infected with the twelfth angel (which was probably the result, intended or not, of SEELE automating it,) melded with Lilith's body and began to "remake mankind in accordance with the Fruit of Life" (paraphrasing Kaworu), starting with the NERV and UN personnel in the immediate vacinity. Mark.06-Lilith latched onto the nearby soldiers and transformed them into copies of Evangelion Unit 01. Why Unit 01 was copied and not Mark.06 is unclear. Maybe because Unit 01 was ascended/awakened and Mark.06 was not. Maybe because Unit 01 is Lilith-based. Unit 01's involvement in this fight is totally unclear.

By the way, I think 01 is not Adam-based in Rebuild for many reasons, but a quickly stated one is that Mari makes this comment about Unit 13 when her AA bullet passes through it cleanly: "It has no AT field? Don't tell me that unit..." Then later as Unit 13 is ascending, Mari: "It seems one of the surviving Adams has awakened." Unit 01 clearly had an AT field, so it is probably not an Adam.

Anyway, at some point Mark.06-Lilith was decapitated. You see her head on the upper level with Gendo, all of the decapitated Failures of Infinity reaching for it. When Mark.06-Lilith was decapitated, its connection to/control over the Failures was ceased, and the Failures died, mirroring the decapitation of Mark.06-Lilith. Actually, now that I'm typing that out, I realize that it's as if Mark.06-Lilith was "synced" with the Failures, similar to how a pilot syncs with their Eva unit, and when Mark.06-Lilith was decapitated, the Failures sustained a mortal sync injury, similar to Asuka's arm being bisected during EoE.

The question is whether the Failures will be back. They are laying around like Chekhov's stockpile, so yes they will. Lilith will also be brought back. This will probably have to do with Rei's soul making it into Lilith somehow, and reviving & using the Failures for humanity's goals.

By the way, the question of who decapitated Mark.06-Lilith is unclear, but here's my attempt. A lot of the 'epic-scale' events of Rebuild are similar to the ones that happened in NGE with minor alterations. Kaworu gets tricked by a Gendo switcharoo, Giant Rei gets decapitated thus cutting the Impact short, etc. Fixed events in the Dead Sea Scrolls or whatever. In the original nobody in particular decapitated Rei, her head just fell off by way of suicide. I guess you could say Rei decapitated Rei. Maybe with a big scythe this time.

Also, Asuka probably fought with Mark.06 before it fused to Lilith (while Asuka is fighting Mark.09 she remarks: "This reeks of SEELE!") and that fight might be where she got the scars we see on her plugsuit.

Last edited by anonymaus on Tue Feb 13, 2018 6:07 am, edited 2 times in total.